Get out there and start doing it. Volunteer for high school or less sought after sports initially. Use the highest shutter speed you are capable of with a reasonable ISO. I shoot soccer at 1/5000 in daytime at an ISO of 250-500. I start lowering shutter as needed to keep ISO under 2000 and start ti be more picky about shots that don’t require the faster speeds. Makes for a great game catalogue. You can have much higher ISO and get away with it but lower is always better when possible.

It’s super addictive and fun! The nice part is you can do it part time if you’re not wanting a wholesale change.

RAW as lighting is often suspect. JPG is great for sports for the turnaround but you have less control over the final if conditions aren’t ideal. I’m NOT anti jpg and would suggest most photogs use it for sports.

I was historically Nikon for 20 years. Moved to Sony due to issues with Nikon as a company. There cameras are good, though I’m now much happier with moth Sony.

I ordered the 400 2.8 from Nikon at its release. Months later, they couldn’t ship or provide updates so I moved to Sony. Not sure if Nikon is better now. I actually shoot RAW to maintain more control of the light and run about 1-2 minutes per photo processing on the long side. If I’m particular about the shot and don’t have to crop I can run them in 30 seconds. This requires a super fast laptop that ran the same price as my cameras.

Honestly the in-game shots are mostly for preset graphics which are sent each quarter online. The teams will use old photos if they have to, and you can generally get the feel of the game’s situation to limit the risk. It is generally understood you won’t catch every moment, and, the games are televised so they can revert to video as well. I’ve heard many crowd eruptions when in the team room processing photos and not lost sleep over it.