amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

You didn't indicate the exact ISOs your tried... but I've shot as high as 8000 and even 16000 with 7DII and gotten quite usable images. Shoot RAW, be careful to avoid underexposure, minimize cropping and use some post-processing noise reduction (I use Noiseware). I have little trouble using ISO 6400, while 3200 or anything lower is no problem for the camera.

It isn't a sports shot, but below is one of my early ISO 16000 test shots with 7DII (and, it so happens, 100-400II) without any extra noise reduction, just the default settings in Lightroom 6 during a standard RAW conversion...



Sure, if you look at it ridiculously large, you'll find noise in the above image. After all it is at ISO 16000! But for most purposes the noise is well handled and not a problem.... 8x10 print, online sharing at 100 ppi and in Internet sizes... it's more than good enough! And, I suppose part of my attitude about high ISO and noise comes from shooting film for 25 years... slide film no faster than ISO 200 and more often 100 or 50! Color print film when I needed 400. For B&W I sometimes pushed ISO 400 film to 800, but never higher. And my favorite B&W film was ISO 100. To me, being able to shoot at ISO 3200 is fantastic and everything above that is utterly amazing.

However, when I need to shoot in low light conditions I also will often put away the f5.6 lens and instead use Canon EF 300/4L, EF 70-200/4, EF 70-200/2.8, EF 300/2.8 or EF 135/2... one, two or three stops faster. But with any of those lenses you really have to watch Depth of Field at their larger apertures. It can be just too shallow, especially with closer subjects, and focus accuracy becomes a lot more critical.

Depending upon the type of lighting, are you using your camera's Anti-Flicker feature? Fluorescent lighting is the most commonly recognized "problem" lighting where Anti-Flicker is really helpful... but there are some other types of lighting that act similarly.

catchlight.. Loc: Wisconsin USA- Halden Norway

I did correct it to 2.0 in the next post. Canon's $6k 2.0 lens for $529 would be crazy impossible. I did pass on a 200mm 1.2 a month ago at $1800. Those are out there if you look and are awesome but not repairable if anything goes bad due to no parts.

franksfun Loc: Bucks County PA

You might try upping your in custom settings. (Explained in your manual or just look it up online.) Shoot in Av with center point metering. Work with an aperture at 5.6 or 6.0 and you may be pleased with your results. Try this before going for more of a lense.

GENorkus Loc: Washington Twp, Michigan

Most High School or younger, don't seem to mind flash use. Although it's only right to ask first. Above that, it's unlikely!
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Note on fun stuff I did back it the 1990's:
As one who designed and built a "better-better" beam unit, I can tell you they are not very good for action photography. When you get distances greater than 30-ish yards away, it gets very difficult to properly aim the light beam. The further away the subject is, makes it worse. You can adjust the beam focus for a wider area but the light intensity fades quickly.

Intensity and aiming is one reason why I experimented with a "quad beam" system. That worked very good for subjects 30 to 50 yards away. Further than that and I felt it just wasn't worth the trouble. *(Just saying: I did get reasonably well lite images at 100 to 120 yards away but the subjects were non-active.)

I suppose you could set everything up by pre-planning then wait for players to run into the area but I wouldn't count on too much success.