Originally posted by ramseybuckeye I'll agree with several others saying your shots aren't that bad, and that you don't need that high of a shutter speed. Soccer is not easy to shoot. It's a very free flowing game and action can easily be missed, don't expect to get every great play, you may get a great shot on any play. I'm guessing it is high school since they are playing on a filed also lined for football, and a lot of these venues are not lit well at all. The KP does help you a lot here with it's low light abilities. You can push that ISO and do well if you don't need to do heavy cropping. I personally would shoot in Tv mode, I think the camera does a good job of selecting aperture and ISO. Always take a few shots to test what type of shutter speed you can get. I've always been a center spot AF user, but I have been experimenting with multi point on flying birds and such, and getting results that are way better than I expected. It seems to me the continuous autofocus works better with 9 points. So do some trials. You shooting position can really help you too, of course you want to be as close to the field as you can, if you can get beyond the goal lines (and actually behind the goal) you can get some really nice viewpoints. I haven't got to shoot soccer for a while, but I always got ready for any set piece action, because it is more predictable than any other part of the sport. You have a ton of suggestions, try several, good luck, and enjoy the games.
I think you do need a high shutter speed. I shoot a lot of youth soccer, and in good light 1/1000th is the minimum I'd use, and even at 1/1250th you'll sometimes get balls and feet with some motion blur. Sometimes with very poor lighting I'll go as slow as 1/500th, but understand that those will often or usually have some blur and the ball will show obvious blur.
I always shoot sports in TAv, and allow the ISO to float as necessary. On my old K-3 II I'd cap it at 12800, but anything over 3200 or 6400 was not great, and reserved for nighttime shots in poor lighting. With the Mark III I have no problems going to 25600 or even higher if the light isn't great. I'll take that over motion blur.
I'm usually using the 55-300PLM, and shoot either wide open or a few clicks down from that. It has a narrow enough max aperture that it provides good depth of field even wide open. And it's sharp enough, too.
With the K-3 II or K-30 I would always, always, always use center point autofocus with back button focus. That was really the only way to get decent results with soccer, any of the expanded areas just wouldn't keep up. With the Mark III Expanded Area (S) or (M) works quite well, and I still use back button focus. After years of doing that tying the shutter to the focus seems weird and unnatural and I'm always getting refocus when all I want to do is hit the shutter.
My other rule of thumb for soccer is "two eyes and the ball". I almost always get better results standing near one of the goals than on the sidelines. If the subject of interest has their back to you something extraordinary has to be going on to make a compelling photo. If your favorite player's face is in the scene and the ball is there, too, you'll often get good shots with nothing of particular note going on.