Historic Penang school adds pickleball court in major upgrade
St. Xavier’s Institution is set to become Malaysia’s first school with a pickleball court, adding the sport to a heritage campus in George Town’s UNESCO core.
A historic Penang school is turning an underused field into a modern sports hub, and pickleball is the headline addition. St. Xavier’s Institution in George Town is set for a major upgrade that would put a pickleball court beside a synthetic track and football facilities, a shift that reaches far beyond one campus.
The field opposite the school has been waiting for this kind of overhaul for 169 years. St. Xavier’s, established in 1852, describes itself as the oldest surviving formal school in Penang and possibly Malaysia, with its roots stretching back to 1787. That makes the project unusually significant: one of the country’s most symbolic schools is making space for one of the region’s fastest-rising sports inside a UNESCO World Heritage district.
The plan also shows that this is more than a headline-grabbing court build. An underground drainage system will be installed to deal with long-standing waterlogging, while the existing tennis court is expected to be removed because of poor usage. Board chairman Victor Tan Seang Hin has framed the upgrade as a way to transform the area into a more active community hub, while principal Janestanstein Stephen says the new facilities should lift the school’s sporting standards.
That matters because St. Xavier’s is not operating in a vacuum. George Town received its UNESCO World Heritage listing in July 2008, and the school says a plaque was placed on its main gate in 2013 to mark its place in that historic setting. Bringing pickleball into that landscape gives the sport a kind of institutional seal of approval that private clubs and commercial venues cannot match. If the court is built as planned, SXI would likely become the first school in Malaysia with a pickleball court.
The move also fits a broader Penang trend. By late 2025, the state already had more than 50 established pickleball venues and more than 300 courts, and the Penang Pickleball Association was formed in 2023 to help drive development. What makes the SXI project stand out is not just the number of courts, but where one of them is going: inside a heritage school that could help turn pickleball from a weekend pastime into a school-sport pipeline.
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