Special Olympics Holiday Classics Basketball - 12/5-6/09

Celia and I spent two days as volunteer photographers at the Special Olympics Holiday Classics at Kaneohe Bay Marine Corp. It was great opportunity for me to practice shooting sport and we even got an official photographer badge! There were only two sports: Basketball and Bowling. To keep it short, I'm doing bowling shots in a separate post.
I had originally thought it would be an easier basketball shoot because there would be little kids who would not run around as fast but I quickly found out otherwise. The teams were pretty good and I spent a lot of wasted blurry shots trying to follow the action on the first day of the shoot. I did, however, get a few action shots using my 70-200mm lens.
It was surprisingly bright so I was able to shoot at Shutter priority at 1/200 and ISO 800.
The 70mm is too close to shoot w/o cropping out something but I was lucky to get what I did under the basket.
The second day, I started to get better accustomed to the environment. I decided to be patient and WAIT for the action to happen before I clicked and I got much better shots.
I even got the tip off..
Also, I got better at timing when to press the shutter so that the ball is at the players hand as they are dribbling and not when the ball hits the floor, which happens when I press too slow.
I get sharper focused shots when the players are more stationary.