Richard Willyard was born in Southern California, but raised in Northern California from age 5. As a youth in 1985, he started square dancing with a teen club and currently dances at hoedowns and conventions at the Plus and A-1 levels. He started clogging in 1989 with the Diablo Mountain Cloggers and has also danced with the Hillbilly Cloggers. Since 1992, he primarily dances with the Barbary Coast Cloggers, but also dances with the Aftershock adult performance and competition team.
Richard has been teaching and choreographing clogging routines since 1990. He has had the opportunity to teach at conventions and workshops, not only in California, but also in Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. The main reason for his continued commitment to the Barbary Coast Cloggers is the performance aspect of the group. The BCC has a history of quality, excellence, and achievement in their performance and the group consists of great guys that are fun, kind, and considerate of one another.
In addition to dance, he enjoys bowling, exploring new towns/cities, and Disneyland. He also collects Tigger products and Beanie Baby Bears. He is recently studying speech pathology at California State University Sacramento.
