Dinny,
To shoot action you have to get out of Auto mode, for sure. There are Scene modes in the D7000 and one of them is sports so you could try that but otherwise at a minimum you force the camera to shoot at much higher shutter speeds than it would normally select. The easy way to do this is to jack the ISO (which is one of the great strengths of the D7000) up to something like 3200 or probably even 6400 and then shoot in Shutter priority mode with the shutter set on 1/500 or something like that. I'd then take a few test shots in various lighting conditions and see if I was getting any underexposed results. The other way to do it would be to again set the iso as previously mentioned, run the camera in Aperture priority and run the lens wide open or one stop down (to get a bit better sharpness, but that'll vary by lens) and again shoot some test shots to see what you're getting for shutter speeds. The first method is the most likely to freeze action but may result in underexposed images, the second will get you proper exposure but might slow the shutter to the point of not freezing action.
Anyway, I'm a crackerjack at recommendations but also suffer from forgetting 99% of this shit when I go to shoot.