In Shrewsbury, Jackie Eagle teaches a game that becomes your community

In a story published August 16, 2026, the Community Advocate profiled Jackie Eagle of Eagle Mahjong, an American Mahjong teacher in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. Writer Lauren Rosenkrantz set her inside a wider trend, describing American Mahjong as a craze that has caught on across Central Massachusetts, a game that keeps the mind sharp through strategy and pattern recognition and builds connection through play.

The paper explains the game in brief: four players draw, trade and discard tiles, each working toward a winning pattern from the card the National Mah Jongg League issues every year. Eagle told the paper it is not something you sit down and learn in one go, because the game has many layers and many rules.

From a friends' table to a business

Eagle began playing seven years before the story ran, when friends asked whether she would like to learn, according to the article. Her children were heading off to college, she was becoming an empty nester and she was looking for new hobbies, so she joined their group, and they taught her.

About a year before the profile, she started a group of her own and taught the game to around 10 friends. Then she found that many more people wanted to learn. She told the paper she was soon teaching other people's friends and relatives, and from there decided to start her own business.

“It becomes your community. It becomes your support.”Jackie Eagle, to the Community Advocate

What a first class looks like

Eagle Mahjong hosts classes where anyone can learn to play, per the article. Eagle described starting with the basics and adding rules, techniques and strategies a little at a time, and said that by the end of the first class her students are usually playing a game. She described the game as offense and defense at once: building your own hand while keeping the other players from reaching Mahjong, with plenty of planning and pattern recognition and a little luck.

Her ticket pages show the format. A two-session series in Shrewsbury met on Tuesdays, August 18 and 25, 2026, from 6 to 8:30 p.m., at $125 per person, a price the page says covers instruction, a 2026 National Mah Jongg League card, instruction booklets and light snacks. The first night covers the tiles, the Charleston (the exchange of tiles before play begins), reading the card and the flow of the game. The second moves to guided play, strategy, calling tiles and completing hands. The page says lessons are taught "in small, friendly groups."

The same series also runs at LK Home & Gifts in West Boylston. Her pages list it there on Tuesdays, September 1 and 8, and on Mondays, September 14 and 21, each at $125 per person.

The next table: guided and open play

Per the Community Advocate, Eagle hopes to introduce guided play and open play sessions in collaboration with the Shrewsbury Recreation Department.

She has already offered that kind of evening in Hudson. Her page for a Mahjong Night at the Evergreen Room, at The CroseNest, on Thursday, June 18, 2026, offered two kinds of ticket. Guided Play, at $45, was meant for players fresh from Mahjong 101 and 102 classes or in need of a refresher, with instructors on hand to get them started and answer questions. Open Play, at $30, was meant for experienced players who wanted to play on their own with friends.

Eagle told the paper that community is what people have really been wanting. Since the pandemic, she said, life has turned toward screens, and learning the game and joining a group is bringing people back to spending time together. She added that most people have now heard of Mahjong, where once many had not, and compared its spread to pickleball's.

How to take part

As of this writing, Eagle Mahjong lists its classes and events on its Ticket Tailor page, which also carries a link for contacting the organizer. A newcomer starts with a two-session learn-to-play series; a player who has taken a class can watch the same page for guided play.

Prim's view

My favorite line in this profile is the one about the first night: by the end of it, her students are usually playing a game. I believe it. Nothing turns a list of rules into a game you want to play again like a real hand on a real rack.

The quieter idea is the one I would underline. The step from a beginner class to a guided table is where most new players either stay or drift away. A class teaches you the tiles; a regular table teaches you that you belong there. A teacher who plans for both in her own town is building that second part, and a town that gets both is worth watching.

I also like that the card comes with the lessons. The League prints a new one every year and everyone at a table plays the same one, so a beginner who starts with this year's card in hand starts on the same page as everyone else. And I like the empty nest at the start of the story. Jackie Eagle went looking for a hobby and found a community. Now she is setting the table for the next person who comes looking.