Yeah - it's the bane of digitals... slow shutter reaction time and slow between shots. Right now you can spend about a thousand dollars and get one that's faster, but the price is coming down.
My camera has a half-pushed position on the shutter that focuses the lens without taking the picture. If you hold it down and wait, and follow the action along, it's ~almost instant to click the picture.
Yeah, mine has that feature, too. Catch is that it doesn't mean the *next* shot will come quickly. There's a feature that takes a buncha shots a few seconds apart, but I haven't played much with that.
The one of mine that broke has a rapid fire 3/second mode. Keeps taking them as long as you hold it down. Many newer reasonably prices ones have that.