Focus with Reb xt for sports..help

[hotled]

I shot some pictures at a little league tourney and posted them in the sports section here.
During bright daylight I was having a terrible time getting crisp images w/o blowing out the colors.
Every shot seemed a tad OOF and I tried thousands of combinations on settings, I was handheld so that probably hurt but I was braced against a pole and was pretty steady.
Is there possibly a setting I may be missing or a focusing technique I should be using?
I'm very new at this, so please try to use simple terms for my simple mind:lol:

I also posted some night shots, those were the only keepers of the night out of 38 photos:(

Oh, I was using the 70-200 2.8.

Soory just saw this is the wrong forum...

[dmwierz]

Bright daylight is always a challenge. You could try adjusting your exposure a fraction of a stop, but I usually just shoot in AV mode to keep my aperture down whhich keeps the shutter speeds up and hope for the best.

Regarding focus, what were you shooting? Batters; pitchers; fielders? Each takes a slightly different approach on the XT. CFn4-1 is what I use. It lets you use AI Servo when you're holding down the "*" button, but as soon as you let it up, it locks on focus in One Shot mode. This allows you to keep the focus point on the subject with AI Servo when it is moving towards/away from you (shooting a pitcher from behind the plate, or shooting a fielder. One shot is what you want for batters or pitchers shot from the first or third base side. Their movement is pretty much along the focal plane, and you can just focus on them once, and then frame your subject as required.

As you probably have figured out, AI Servo won't work for shots where you're trying to lead the shot by moving your center focus point out in front of the subject. You lose focus on the subject and it grabs whatever is in the center - the fence, another fielder, etc.