Here’s a video I’ve watched about 20 times:

The breakdancing here is legit. Also, this child appears to be, what, ten years old? Wearing a Wolfpack-related hat of some sort? “I need to know why this kid is wearing NC State protective gear!?” Ovies said in his next post. “WOLFPACK UNLIMITED!”

Look, Wolfpack fans have had a rough couple of weeks. On September 19, the football team lost to Vanderbilt in a manner that only happens once every a half-century or so, forcing longtime NC State fan and American Aquarium frontman B.J. Barham to declare, once again, that “the Wolfpack ain’t for soft people.” (The quote came from a pep talk delivered ten years ago by State legend Philip Rivers to fire up the football team; it’s since been used to describe a fan base that deals with teams that find deliciously creative ways to lose games, a phenomenon lovingly described as “NC State Shit.”)

Often, Pack fans have to find creative places to celebrate victories. The football team hasn’t won the ACC since 1979 (and became the last power conference champion not to be invited to a bowl game), but somehow has beaten North Carolina for five straight seasons. Yay! The men’s basketball team was about to fire its coach when it went on an inexplicable run, won the ACC Tournament, and made it to the Final Four in 2024. That meant State had to give a bonus and an automatic two-year contract extension to coach Kevin Keatts, making it more expensive when they canned him a year later. Yay? Other sports like wrestling, swimming and diving, and women’s basketball have found more success. But the football team has been so frustratingly better-than-average that its coach, Dave Doeren, regularly catches strays at, of all places, Carolina Hurricanes games.

Hence, when an NC State grad named Abby Lampe became a two-time champion of the Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake in Gloucestershire, England, she returned home and was treated like a Wolfpack legend. “How does it feel to have the greatest achievement by an NC State athlete in the 21st century?” one Rabbit Hole reader asked her.

And now? There’s someone out there dropping incredible moves while wearing a NC State … hat of some sort? Give this kid an honorary degree! Trot this child out for a halftime show at Carter-Finley Stadium! Hold a parade on Hillsborough Street! DO WHAT IT TAKES. Breakin’ ain’t for soft people.

So yes, it was my duty to, once again, find the story behind an North Carolina-related item of headwear. State fans, be warned, this is not going to end like you think it will. You may get to the finish, only to be frustrated. Actually, it’ll probably end exactly like you think it will.

First off: Ovies told me he originally saw the video on Reddit, and it appears to have been posted by Stance, an aggregator of dance videos with millions of followers. They post a lot, so rather than try to find the original video there, I just plugged a screenshot of the video into Google Image Search, and that led me to an Instagram account, @bgirl.kittychina. There, I found not one but several videos of a 10-year-old girl from China wearing what appears to be a plush NC State hat meant to resemble a football helmet, minus the facemask:

B-Girl Kitty is the stage name of Ge Aichen, a 10-year-old dancer from China who’s traveled the world for breakdancing competitions. Her feed begins when she’s 8, and along the way she drops some jaw-dropping moves. I’m not really selling this short: She spins, twists, and throws down with the confidence of someone who’s at least twice her age.

The video that I first saw is from May and was taken at a show in France, but the red NC State hat seemed to make its debut a competition in Australia in February. It appears to be as much about protection as it is about fashion, because she’s wearing it as she spins over and over again on her head. There’s also a chin strap. And! It’s not the first version of the plush helmet hat that B-Girl Kitty has worn. In videos from last year, she’s wearing a similar, Miami Dolphins-themed version. Same insane moves. Different football team.

So how exactly do you get in contact with a world-class 10-year-old breakdancing phenomenon to ask a phenomenally inane question like “what’s up with the hat?” You just send a message on Instagram, that’s how.

“This is the hat given to me by my teacher,” the B-Girl Kitty account wrote back. “This hat provides excellent protection. He gave it to me, hoping that wearing it would effectively protect my head and my face, as the hat can provide protection when it matches my movements. At the same time, he also hopes that I can wear it during competitions, just like his presence on the stage with me.”

So, then, why NC State? I never got a direct answer, but as you might expect, it looks like it’s not really about NC State. “I also really like the color of the hat.” she wrote. “It’s red and white. Especially the red color, it closely matches the way I express myself through dancing. It‘s agile and aggressive. I think it suits me very well. Pompousness and confidence are the most important parts of my dancing. In China, red also represents good luck. Just like our national flag is mainly red.”

Okay. So maybe it was a stretch to assume that a 10-year-old girl from China would be a rabid NC State football fan. The hat’s red. It stays strapped on her head. There’s no secret Mr. Wuf connection or anything. Her dance teacher gave it to her, and she wore it.

So, where’d the teacher get it? This plush, fleece helmet is really hard to find, at least in the United States. There’s no exact match that’s currently available in stores here. The closest thing I found was a lone NC State replica version on Ebay, although it doesn’t have the chin strap.

Again, I sent B-Girl Kitty another message, and again, the person on the other end took a few days to respond. “I asked my coach, and he told me that it was purchased at a competition,” she wrote. “I checked on a Chinese shopping website and found that the same hat could also be bought there.” It’s not exactly surprising that collegiate gear that’s not for sale in the United States would be readily available in China. After all, the replica above is made in that country, and factories that have extras left over will often sell them domestically.

That said, I still don’t know exactly where B-Girl Kitty’s teacher got the hat, and, in any event, it’s not as if this is the only thing she wears on her head. Last month, a week before NC State lost to Vanderbilt in the dumbest possible way, Kitty appeared at a competition in Austria wearing what appears to be a plush blue Ole Miss football helmet. Later she came out wearing a toboggan.

I could go on evaluating a 10-year-old’s fashion, but this appears to be a Mr. Sparkle sort of situation. During an episode of The Simpsons from 1997, Homer finds a box of Japanese detergent featuring a mascot that looks almost exactly like him. What does this mean, he wonders? How did a company across the Pacific get an image of him?

He has a kid translate the Japanese text on the box. Then he contacts the company, which sends him a VHS tape that explains the origins of Mr. Sparkle (“I’m disrespectful to dirt!” Mr. Sparkle says at one point). The video ends with two corporate mascots, a fish and a light bulb, combining to make a logo that looks exactly like Homer Simpson’s head. That’s it. No conspiracy. No deeper story. Just a coincidence. There’s your answer, fish-bulb.

Regardless of how we got there, If you’re NC State, It’s pretty cool that an immensely talented breakdancer is accidentally repping your team. If you didn’t have a favorite breaker before, you do now! And who knows! Maybe B-Girl Kitty will get an NIL deal from the Wolfpack. Or maybe she’ll come close to winning a big competition, only to have a rare chain of events cause her to come up tantalizingly short. And folks, if that happens, there is only one solution: Fire Dave Doeren.