A Real Baby Boomer : Volleyball: Dennie Knoop, the oldest player on the women’s pro beach tour, is back in shape and playing better since the birth of her first child.

Watching Dennie Knoop, with her washboard stomach and chiseled biceps, sprint around a sand volleyball court with incredible agility, it is difficult to imagine where she was 18 months ago.

Knoop, at 39 the oldest player in the Women’s Professional Volleyball Assn., was bedridden after the Cesarean birth of her first child, Brooke.

She was pregnant for four months when she completed the 1993 pro beach volleyball season and was in great shape, which allowed her to have a relatively easy pregnancy.

“But labor was just horrific,” said Knoop, who resides in Topanga Canyon. “I can’t begin to tell you how bad it was.”

Knoop suffered from pregnancy-induced hypertension and was inactive for two weeks. When she was finally cleared to walk again, resuming the grueling training regimen she had practiced for years was out of the question.

Stitches across her stomach caused excruciating pain and Knoop thought she had lost the strength and stamina that took years to build.

She waited seven weeks to begin training again.

“If I hadn’t laughed my first day back at the beach, I would have cried,” Knoop said. “After all those years of working so hard, it was like starting over. I was tripping in the sand and I was a klutz with the ball.”

Knoop, who has been honored as the WPVA’s most inspirational player three times, gave birth in February, 1994. By May she was back on the tour. She missed one tournament in the ’94 season, earning $28,625 in prize money and roughly twice that amount from sponsors.

With partner Deb Richardson, Knoop reached two tournament finals, placed third four times and compiled a 53-34 record.

“She played better after the baby,” said Gail Castro, another mother on the WPVA tour. “I admire and respect her because she had that difficult pregnancy and she came back pretty early and she was driven.”

This season Knoop has a 46-27 record and has advanced to the final of one tournament and placed third in two others.

At an international championship event last month in Hermosa Beach, Knoop and Richardson came through the qualifying draw and won nine of 13 matches to place fourth among 24 of the world’s best teams.

This weekend, Knoop is seeded fifth with new partner Elaine Roque in the 32-team WPVA Nationals in Huntington Beach.

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Knoop is back at full strength and she attributes the quick recovery to her strict, health-oriented lifestyle. She follows an organic diet that excludes refined sugars or processed foods. She also practices Yoga and does routine as well as intense weight-and-conditioning workouts.

“Dennie is incredible, she’s a stud,” said LeValley Pattison, WPVA tour director. “She’s playing better than ever. She really is an idol for a lot of the younger players on the tour.”

Each season since joining the WPVA full time in 1989, Knoop has had winning records.

She is the only player ranked among the WPVA’s top 12 who did not play volleyball in college. Knoop attended Division III North Central College in Illinois on a basketball scholarship. She was also on the school’s track and softball teams.

It wasn’t until Knoop moved to Spain to do postgraduate work at the University of Valencia that she began to play volleyball.

“I was playing basketball with some guys out on a cement court in Spain and this woman asked if I wanted to play in this volleyball club,” Knoop said. “So I went and I was green, but I did it for four years and really liked it.”

When Knoop moved to Miami in the early 1980s to work in international marketing, she played recreational beach volleyball. In later years, as her interest grew, she joined the East Coast beach volleyball circuit.

In 1990 Knoop and her husband, Steve, moved to Southern California so she could compete against the sport’s best players.

For several years Knoop has worked out with Nina Matthies, a former UCLA volleyball player who competed on the beach for many years and is now women’s volleyball coach at Pepperdine.

“Dennie played catchup for quite a few years because she had no volleyball background,” Matthies said. “Now she’s playing great and she understands how hard you have to work at this age.”

Knoop plans to compete as long as she feels healthy and intense about training. She predicts that will be at least three to four more years.

“I don’t feel almost 40,” she said. “I feel very youthful. I’m young at heart. I don’t feel like switching off the faucet yet.”

Knoop also plans to have another child in the next year or two. She figures if she made it back from the first pregnancy, she can do anything.

“I feel better and stronger than ever,” Knoop said.