PARIS -- Canadian Melissa Humana-Paredes has as her cellphone background a picture of herself, as a 3-year-old, wearing the bronze medal from the men's beach volleyball tournament at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Until this week, it had been the only Olympic medal her country had ever won in the sport.
Humana-Paredes, whose father coached Canada to bronze nearly three decades ago, teamed with Brandie Wilkerson on Thursday to clinch no worse than silver at the Paris Games, rallying after losing the first set to beat Switzerland and earn a spot in the women's beach volleyball final.
The Canadians will play the top-ranked Brazilian pair of Ana Patrícia and Duda, who beat the Tokyo silver medalists from Australia on Thursday night. The German men also clinched no worse than silver, beating defending Olympic champion Norway in the men's semifinals. They will play Sweden in the final on Saturday.
The Canadian women had to win a lucky loser match just to make the knockout stage of the tournament and then faced a match point against the Swiss before winning the second set. It was the first set the Swiss team of Tanja Hueberli and Nina Brunner had lost in Paris.
"There's a lot of pride in what we've accomplished, what we've done over the last two weeks," Humana-Paredes said after winning 14-21, 22-20, 15-12. "We've experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.
"We still have one more day, one more game, and we're not losing sight of that," she said. "But it feels really great to secure a medal for Canada. We know the color that we want. But we have this together forever. And we hope Canada is proud of that."
Watching from the stands at the Eiffel Tower Stadium was Humana-Paredes' father, Hernan Humana, who coached John Child and Mark Heese to third place in Atlanta, the sport's inaugural appearance on the Olympic program. His daughter, who was born in 1992, said that watching him travel the world for beach volleyball gave her the bug.
"It was something that I've been looking back to a lot, actually that's guided my career," Humana-Paredes said. "It gives me hope and it gives me inspiration of what's possible. And he always taught me that anything is possible. And I don't think I would have been able to be here without his experience and his belief."
The Canadians trailed 20-19 in the second set before taking three points in a row to force a first-to-15, third set tiebreaker. They opened a 14-11 lead and, on match point No. 2, the Swiss hit it long and out.
Humana-Paredes chased after the ball, watched it land beyond the end line and kept on running in a giant circle back toward the net before coming back to Wilkerson, who belatedly dropped to her knees in apparent shock.
"That game alone, let alone the last two weeks of this tournament, it was a roller coaster," Humana-Paredes said. "And so there's a huge sense of relief. I think you can see I was just running around because I was just full of energy that I needed to get let out."
German teammates Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler beat defending champions Anders Mol and Christian Sorum for the first time in their careers. Norway rallied after losing the first set to force a tiebreaker, but fell behind 14-12 in the third.
On the second match point, Mol appeared to deliver the block that would have tied it 14-all. But Germany used one of its challenges to request a review of whether he committed a net fault; the replay showed that the Norwegian did hit the bottom of the net with his legs when he jumped, and the match was over.
"First of all, we celebrate that we won the semifinal. And then we're going to focus on the final match. And then we will see if it's gold or silver," Ehlers said. "I think both would be amazing for our federation, for our country. And we are so happy that we could make it happen."