I have a pentax kx but before the return period ends i wanna make sure i made the right choice and you guys seem to be on top of things here.

Is there something about your Pentax K-x that you're not happy with?

Just trying to get the best bang for my buck gonna be awhile before i purchase again is all. I took some shots saturday and sunday messing with the settings on sunday.. ill post them if you wanna critique them.

The Pentax K-x with the 55-300 should be able to handle your son's sports ok, as long as he's still playing below the high school level. Once he's in high school (or so), the fields get bigger and you probably won't enjoy the same level of access you would at the lower levels. At that point, you'd probably need a longer lens.

Canon's entry level dSLRs have better AF systems for sports/action photography, but an equivalent Canon setup will exceed your budget by quite a bit.

Sports shooting isn't easy. It's very demanding on equipment. Both lens and camera play a part. The k-x has a pretty decent focus system for moving subjects in good light - not as good as Canon or Nikon, but pretty good. The lens however isn't going to be a great performer focus-speed wise. For a kit lens it's good, but kit lenses aren't great at sports because they don't contain fast focusing motors. Those types of lenses cost a good amount of money in any system. There are other problems using an f5.6 lens - slower shutter speeds and a lot of dof so distracting backgrounds are more of a problem. But you wouldn't gain a whole lot switching to nikon or canon and using a kit-lens like the canon 55-250 as it has the same problems your current lens does and that will cripple the benefit of a better focs-tracking focus system.

Now, having said all that - sports shooting takes skill and technique. It is NOT a point and shoot thing - I could give you my professional grade kit and if you don't know yet how to shoot sports you can still get poor results. We can help you out with technique down in the sports forum. But you can only go so far with consumer grade lenses. You can go further with Canon and Nikon systems but only if you want to spend the money - eventually getting more expensive lenses and better bodies more adept at the difficult focus tracking task. One of the toughest things to do. If you see yourself staying around that $1000 price point I don't see a jump to Canon or nikon helping you a whole lot. And that's OK - you simply work on your technique and maximize the results you can get with what you can afford. Of course, this all assumes good light - if you're trying to shoot at night under lights you're gonna have to spend some money - all the technique in the world can't change physics that much and an f5.6 lens just isn't going to do well under those conditions.

So with that said what price range should i be looking at and what camera and lens should i go for?

you know you can add the Bigma OS HSM lens to give you more reach on the soccer field to the pentax. It will give you reach out to 500mm.

And for more close in sports, the sigma 70-200 OS HSM.

Thanks i will look these up also ill be sticking with the K-x

300mm is fine if you'll be standing on the sidelines. You'll need something longer when shooting from the stands.

And since the Pentax K-x has sensor shift image stabilization in the camera body, you can skip the Sigma 70-200 OS HSM that shoturtle recommended, and get the unstabilized (non-OS) version instead, which will save you a few bucks.

True, but the non OS is discontinued. There are some that non OS ones out there.