LSU running back Caden Durham (29) speeds away from the line as offensive lineman Bo Bordelon (67) blocks defensive end Paris Shand (0) at practice on Saturday, August 17, 2024 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The word used to describe his upbringing was "open." Open to traveling the world.
Open to trying new things. Open to having different experiences. "I've always been encouraged to try and do different things," Shand said.
Shand is a senior edge rusher for , an expected key contributor in first-year coordinator Blake Baker's defense when the Tigers kick off their season Sunday in Las Vegas against Southern Cal. But unlike many of his teammates, Shand didn't grow up in the bayou. He wasn't even raised in a country where football is king.
Instead, he got to where he is because he was willing to try something new. How else does a soccer goalkeeper and basketball player from Toronto become a Southeastern Conference defensive lineman in less than a decade? "This world is so, so fast, and we get into a spot where we just live a life where you can just stay in one spot ..
. you've got to see people and different people to really understand what's going on in the world, right?" Kevin Shand, Paris' father, said. "So that's always been my motivation, in terms of just .
.. keeping an open mind always.
" Paris never followed his dad around during his playing career. Truth be told, he doesn't remember much about his father's time in professional basketball. Kevin was a 6-foot-10 center who played internationally for more than a decade, playing in Mexico, France, Bulgaria, the Middle East and China, among other countries.
Paris stayed in Toronto with his mother and the rest of his extended family. "I was a little kid," Paris said. Kevin learned a lot about himself while bouncing from country to country.
Most of all, he learned how to become a professional and to thrive in adverse circumstances. There were countless times where he found himself outside of his comfort zone, whether it was playing in raucous European arenas or having to quickly get ready for a game right off the bus. It was a lesson he had to learn quickly.
To earn his first professional contract overseas, he endured an hourlong tryout after a long flight to Budapest and a two-hour drive to Dombóvár, Hungary, where the team was located. "They're like, 'OK, try out,' and I'm like 'Try out?' I thought I was on the team," Kevin said. Kevin recognizes the importance of those moments and how they forced him to get out of his comfort zone.
Having an openness toward doing things that are uneasy or foreign is important. "If you want to play sports, you've got to travel, at least if you want to play at a high level," Kevin said. "It also tests your mind in terms of your ability to cope, because things don't go perfectly, you know?" Kevin has become an invaluable resource for Paris as he navigates his own athletic career.
The two talk often, and Paris heeds his father's advice. Paris also has accumulated a lot of experiences through traveling for his athletic career. He was a power forward for Team Canada at the FIBA U16 Americas Championship in Argentina, winning a silver medal.
He then spent his senior year of high school attending Loomis Chaffee School in Connecticut before starting his college football career at Arizona, playing three seasons for the Wildcats before transferring to LSU. "I feel like (traveling) really helped with my sense of independence and just thinking about what I really want to do when it comes to, like, with my life and stuff," Paris said. In the Shand family, being open to new adventures goes beyond the sports world.
Lezanne Adams, Paris' mother, also traveled for work while Paris was growing up. She was, and still is, in sales and interior design, and many of her company's clients were in the United States, Italy or Germany. These works trips resulted in her being gone three to four times per year for about a week.
"If I was gone away, he'd always be interested in where I went. He'd ask, 'What was the food like? What are the people like?' " Adams said of her son. "So that definitely helped encourage him to want to see the world.
" Kevin doesn't travel for work as often as he once did, but he still exercises his openness to trying new things in a different way. He's become an actor, most notably earning roles in the Amazon Prime TV series "The Boys" and the Syfy TV show "Defiance." He's also worked as a stuntman in two superhero movies, "X-Men: Dark Phoenix" and the first "Suicide Squad" from 2016.
"He's been in some pretty good roles. And like, I saw him on on 'The Boys', and I was watching it, and he had sent me that clip a while ago, but I didn't know what show it was for," Paris said. "And then when I saw the clip again, like when I was watching the show, I sent it to him, and I was like, 'I didn't realize you were on 'The Boys.
' It was cool; it was funny." Paris is proud of his father's work as an actor. He's even open to the idea of potentially becoming an actor later in life, having already worked as an extra on multiple projects, including the Netflix show "Grand Army.
" "It's just more evidence that you (can) do what you want. Like, yeah, you know, I'm 6-foot-10. I shouldn't have a dream of acting.
And I did, and I did it," Kevin said. "And, you know, is it the highest level? Maybe not. Maybe, (but) who knows, right? But the point is, whatever you decide to do, you can have that dream, and you can actually go for and do it.
"So that's the way I live my life, and that's the way I encourage Paris." Paris wanted to play every sport growing up. It got to the point where Adams had to "rein him in a little bit.
" "He's loved literally every single sport," Adams said. His first sport was soccer. As a goalkeeper, his size, big hands and unusual quickness suited him well for the position.
Basketball eventually became his primary sport. Paris played power forward but could also space the floor with his shot. With basketball as his priority, he didn't play football until his junior year of high school.
"I mean, at that point, I was playing basketball in Canada, and I was trying to play basketball Division I in the (United) States," Paris said. "So I really wasn't, like, fully thinking about even playing football." It wasn't the first time a Shand had played football — Kevin had a tryout with the Buffalo Bills in the early 2000s — but Adams recalls lightly discouraging him from playing the sport while growing up because of its potential dangers.
It took only one game on the gridiron before two Canadian universities showed interest. " 'OK, we understand that this is literally the first game that you're playing. But if you decide to stay in Canada and do your schooling, definitely give us a call,' " Adams recalls the schools telling her son.
" 'Like, you just have natural abilities. You have natural talent. You're, like, built for it.
' " Today, Paris applies the lessons he's learned from his parents and his own experiences to his football craft. He meditates "a lot" and has improved simple daily routines, such as his diet. His lack of trepidation for the unknown would suggest he's very confident in himself; or that he's at least someone who concentrates on the potential benefits of a new situation, and rarely dreads conceivable drawbacks.
But Paris doesn't quite see himself in that way. "I feel like I don't even really think about even the benefits generally," Paris said. "I think about just doing the thing itself and whatever comes with it, like I know that I gave it 100%, whatever that may be.
" He is just willing to try something new. "I feel like that's carried throughout my life," Shand said..
