From your reaction and comments, I would seriously recommend considering a digital SLR like the Canon Rebel XT. I know relative to the experience you have described you will be much more satisfied with the camera's response.

David is giving you some good advice. But if you're still contemplating a consumer (the more advanced cameras are called prosumer) digital camera, look to see if there are advanced features that may enable the camera to react faster. Settings that cause the camera to think prior to capturing the image will slow it down. If you can set aperture and shutter speed manually or the focus can be locked on infinity the camera will react faster. If you zoom the lens out to the widest angle the camera is capable of, more of the image will be infocus if the focus is locked at infinity. Additionally that will have an added advantage of enabling you to use a faster shutter speed because the variable aperture zoom will be at a wider f-stop. That will help in capturing action.
Those are a few of the things you can do to speed up the camera reaction time and help you take better pictures of action.