First, let me thank all of you for the advice. I spent the last week shooting more soccer games and experimenting with all of the suggestions offered here in this thread.
Long story short (and maybe some of you can explain why this worked), the continuous shooting issue disappeared.
Some of you thought that the aperture on the lens was slow to respond, but I put the lens on the K-7, and the continuous shooting issue did not surface on the K-7 (but remained on the K-3). Note that I updated the firmware on the K-3, but that did not solve the continuous shooting issue.
So, I did a factory reset of the K-3, put this same lens back on the K-3, and I used only these setting changes:
* multi-segment metering
* switched to AF.S (from AF.C originally)
* AF active area of Auto 27 AF Points
* TAV mode (with ISO range of 100-3200)
* JPG
* #15 AF.S Setting = 1
* #18 AF Status = 3 (medium)
* SR = on
* AF Button - AF1 Enable (meaning not using the AF back button)
* Shutter 1/800
* Aperature 5.0
The photos from yesterday's shoot were great .... crisp, clear .... and most importantly, the sequence bursts were all consistent in terms of exposure.
I have attached a sequence of 3 un-edited photos from a burst.
Also, if you want to see the entire edited shoot:
Womens PSU GA vs Point Park - original photography by data blueprints
I took about 300 shots, and 100 were keepers, so that's a pretty good ratio.
Thanks again to all who helped .... I'm still not sure why this worked, so if you want to comment on that, please do.
Chuck