Friends Gather for Tennis and Mahjong in Tulsa to Support Women In the Trenches of Cancer Treatment

On a late September afternoon in Tulsa, friends drifted onto the tennis court and around the Mahjong Table. The games moved easily, points tallied in both, with teams drawn from a bowl at the start. By the end, prizes and bragging rights would go to the top scorers, though the coin toss waiting to break any ties was more joke than necessity.

The private event, called Tennis & Tiles for Tatas, was organized by Stephanie Gibbs, a founding board member of the Rural Gone Urban Foundation. Each guest paid $100 to play. Light refreshments were served. The atmosphere stayed casual, but the purpose was not.

Tennis & Tiles for Tatas | Tulsa, Okla. | Sept. 2025

Proceeds — $2,775 — were directed to the foundation’s Love Bombs program, which provides judgment-free grants to women in the trenches with that jackwagon cancer. The grants are meant to underwrite moments—trips, family memories, milestone gifts—where the illness doesn’t dictate the day.

For Gibbs, the idea was simple: gather her circle for something they already enjoy, and let that joy spill outward. “It didn’t need to be a gala,” she said. “It just needed to be time together that added up to something more.”

The foundation encourages that approach. Supporters have hosted backyard chili cook-offs, golf scrambles, bunco nights, even informal wine tastings, turning familiar gatherings into small fundraisers. What matters isn’t the format, but the decision to use what’s already in motion—friendship, tradition, habit—and direct it toward women facing the hardest seasons of their lives.

Brooke Taylor, who founded the foundation after her own cancer diagnosis, calls it a way of meeting people where they are. “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “If your people love cornhole, play cornhole. If they love trivia, host trivia. The passion is the point, not the logistics.”

At Gibbs’s home, the afternoon ended the way many Sundays do: neighbors gathering their bags, lingering in conversation before heading out. The difference was what lingered afterward. A handful of games, a modest entry fee, and an idea carried further than the court or the table.