By Omie Drawhorn
When Terri Cobb’s daughter told her working out to a Zumba DVD was ‘boring and no one wants to do it,” Cobb had an idea. “It’s not like the way you do it,” Cobb’s daughter told her.
Cobb, a certified Zumba instructor, immediately thought there was no reason why she couldn’t teach in her daughter’s class at Silverton High School.
Zumba blends international music and Latin-inspired dance steps in a “fitness dance party” atmosphere, she explained.
After a meeting with some of the high school teachers, Cobb started leading a Zumba class one day a week in three different classes. She has now been teaching Zumba at the high school for two years and is returning this fall.
Cobb finds it incredibly rewarding to share her love of Zumba with students. She also teaches Zumba in special education classes at the high school, Central Howell Elementary School and the Silver Falls YMCA.
“Kids don’t know how to move,” Cobb said. “Some kids say ‘why do we have to do this?’ I tell them they need to exercise the rest of their lives to be healthy.”
With Zumba, she is teaching them a fun, complete way to exercise their entire body.
When she approached SHS physical education teacher Marie Traeger about volunteering, Traeger said she thought the offer was “phenomenal.”
“Zumba is really popular,” Traeger said. “Our goal is to introduce students to every form of exercise out there so students can find something that they enjoy.”
Students from other classes enjoy Zumba so much they will get permission from their teachers to attend her classes.
“(Cobb) connects really well with the students; she has a presence when teaching the class that is encouraging and nonthreatening,” Traeger said. “She leads really well; students want to come into class on Friday. Students are all there early and ready to go and it’s all because of her.”
Cobb said sometimes students need encouragement, but before long they are following along with the moves.
“I tell (the middle school boys) that girls in high school like guys who can dance,” Cobb said. “They don’t believe me.”
She also explains athletes, like football and basketball players take dance classes to improve their coordination and rhythm. She loves watching reluctant students grow to love Zumba.
One fifth grade girl “looked at us like we were aliens from another planet” when we started doing Zumba, Cobb said.
Her teacher would encourage her to participate and slowly, she would start to move a foot here or there. Before long, she was participating in all the dances, and she came to the Celebration of Cultures in Silverton, where Cobb led a Zumba dance in the street.
Cobb is also a substitute instructor at Silverton Fitness and Anytime Fitness in Silverton.
She took her first Zumba class in 2009 when Enez Garcia Bradford became certified in Zumba and started teaching classes at Silverton Fitness. It didn’t take Cobb long to get hooked.
“The first time I tried it, it was awkward; I was always in the back row and I felt like a complete fool,” she said.
But Cobb felt like she was getting such a good workout, she kept at it.
“When you sweat through your eyeballs you know you’re getting a good workout,” she said. “It involves the whole body.”
Gradually, Cobb kept moving up from her place in the back row, and when she isn’t teaching classes, she can be found dancing in the front row of any Zumba class.
