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Tawau Sports Complex

Kompleks Sukan Tawau — the district's main sports ground, and the public football fields that go with it

The Tawau Sports Complex (Kompleks Sukan Tawau) is where Tawau holds its big sports days: a main stadium with a running track and floodlights, a hockey stadium, an indoor sports hall, courts for most ball games, a hostel for visiting teams, and, since 2022, a swimming pool. It is run by the Sabah State Sports Board (Lembaga Sukan Negeri Sabah). Around the buildings there is a landscaped park with a jogging track, a children's playground and a water-lily pond, and on weekends it is one of the places Tawau families go for a walk.

Floodlight towers, a scoreboard and the roof of a grandstand showing above trees and oil palms, seen from far off across rough grass, with a heap of sand and pebbles in the foreground. — **The main stadium from the public football fields**: floodlights, scoreboard and grandstand beyond the trees, 26 June 2016. Cropped from the photograph further down.

What is there

The complex's own site plan numbers ten parts:

Administration block — Blok Pentadbiran
Multipurpose hall — Dewan Serbaguna
Indoor sports hall — Dewan Sukan Tertutup
Main sports stadium — Stadium Sukan Utama, with a synthetic running track
Hockey stadium — Stadium Hoki
Outdoor sports facilities — Kemudahan Sukan Luar: tennis, squash, basketball, volleyball, sepak takraw and netball courts
Hostel — Asrama
Surau — prayer room
Guard house — Pondok Pengawal
Recreational facilities — Kemudahan Rekreasi: the jogging track, the children's playground and the landscaped grounds

The swimming pool came much later, and has a story of its own (below). The older pages linked above have this site's photographs of each part, most of them from 2006 to 2009.

How it was built

In September 2004 the Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports announced a RM69.4 million international-standard sports complex for Tawau on Jalan Utara, due for completion in February 2005, with a main stadium, indoor stadium, multipurpose hall, hockey stadium, hostel, convention hall, surau and administration building, and a synthetic track and courts. There was no swimming pool in the plan; the Minister said the Government agreed in principle that there should be one. An older page on this site gives the developer as Denrich Corporation Sdn Bhd and the contractor as THG Construction Sdn Bhd, with a contract value of RM50 million. It was in use in time for the Sabah Games of August 2007; the children's playground was newly finished in 2006.

Big days

Sukan Sabah III (the 3rd Sabah Games, SAGA III), 19–24 August 2007: 1,112 athletes and officials from six zones of Sabah, with a string of Games records set on the new track. The details are on the 2007 page.
6th Special Olympics Sabah Games, 3–6 June 2009: more than 300 athletes from ten district programmes in athletics, bocce and bowling. The Unity Torch Run's final leg ran from the municipal field in town to the complex for the opening ceremony. See the 2009 page.

The swimming pool that took seventeen years

The pool left out of the 2004 plan became one of the longest-running stories in Tawau sport:

2004 — not in the plan; the Government agrees in principle that there should be one.
2013–2014 — the Ministry of Youth and Sports allocates RM13 million for an international-size pool.
2015 — construction starts.
2018 — the contractor abandons the job.
2019 — the state Youth and Sports Minister says the RM14 million abandoned project will be given priority.
28 December 2021 — the pool is completed, and in January 2022 it is handed over to the Sabah State Sports Board.
March 2022 — the Minister explains that it was built to international (FINA) specifications for an Olympic-size pool, at a cost of about RM11 million, but has not been certified as an Olympic-standard pool. There are two pools: a competition pool and a children's pool.
Late May 2022 — the pool opens to the public, with lifeguards on duty.

Opening hours and entrance fees may have changed since the opening; ask at the complex before you go.

The public football fields

A heap of sand and pebbles lit by low evening sun beside a strip of road and tall grass, with the floodlight towers and grandstand of a stadium in the distance beyond trees and oil palms. — **Beside the football fields, 26 June 2016, 5.38 in the evening.** A heap of sand left for building the fields' new toilet, with the main stadium in the distance. There is a sand wasp in the middle of the heap — see below.

Two public football fields belong to the complex's sports facilities but lie outside its compound, about fifteen minutes' walk away, on Jalan Kuhara opposite Pasar Semarak (the Semarak Fresh Market). They are open ground anyone can use, and in the evenings they are a good place for a walk. They sit inside the block of land this site calls the Tawau River Triangle: old oil palm estate, part built over and part left alone beside the Tawau River.

26 June 2016 · 5.38 pm · the sand heap beside the fields

The wasp that looked like a fly

On an evening walk round the fields, a yellow-and-black insect digging a hole in the builders' sand heap: dig, fly off, come back, dig again. It is a sand wasp (Bembicini, probably Bembix), digging a nest for her young and flying off to hunt the flies she feeds them on. Photographs and a short video on its page.

Visiting. The park, jogging track and playground are open to the public. For events, bookings and pool hours, ask the Sabah State Sports Board office at the complex. The public football fields are open ground on Jalan Kuhara, opposite Pasar Semarak.

Tawau Sports Complex — the older pages, with photographs by year: 2004 · 2006 · 2007 · 2009 · 2010
Swimming pools in Tawau
Tawau River Triangle — the land around the football fields
Sports in Tawau · Leisure & Recreation

About this page. Photographs by Wong Fook Yee, 26 June 2016, Canon PowerShot SX510 HS; the stadium view is cropped from the sand-heap photograph, and nothing else has been changed. The 2004 plan is from Bernama (5 September 2004), as kept on this site's 2004 page; the developer, contractor and contract value from this site's 2006 page. The swimming pool history is from Bernama (26 June 2013 and 24 June 2019), the Daily Express (19 August 2014), Utusan Borneo (29 January and 23 May 2022) and a statement by the state Minister of Youth and Sports reported on 22 March 2022. The football fields' place in the complex is the photographer's own knowledge. Rewritten 30 September 2026; it replaces a placeholder page that carried only a title.